WinterNado!

Inundated! I've been positively inundated with people who are gleefully telling me that next month is going to herald the shutting down of the entire United Kingdom.

It won't be because some chap in the US Congress has decided that 'Oh yes, and I managed to bankrupt the World' will look good on his CV.

It won't be because Michael Gove, Secretary of State for badly planned Victorian Educational systems has decided that all exercise books should be replaced by slates and crumbly pieces of chalk and people who can't even speak English convincingly should be taught Latin.

It will be that we are gripped in 'The Worst Winter for the past ONE HUNDRED YEARS!!!!!'

What can we expect from this MegaWinter or HyperWinter or (My own personal favourite) WinterNado or whatever we're going to hype it up as?

It seems that the pesky old Jet Stream is in the wrong position you see, instead of sliding wonderfully across the Atlantic Ocean like a basking shark full of rancid helium and then hanging a left and heading towards the Scilly Isles.  It's barreling away underneath us, dipping a toe in the Channel and then hooning off over western Europe

This causes what Meteororororologists call 'A Localised Area of low Pressure' and the winds from the Arctic all get sucked in to fill the gap with their spiky teeth and icicle claws.  Lovely.

So, they're expecting it to be the worst winter since 1913 eh?  So what was so bad that happened in 1913?

Ah... Well, It seems that extensive investigation shows that in the early part of the year we had 10' snowdrifts in the grim North and virtually no snow in the South at all - What does that tell you? It tells me that it's warmer in the South than it is in the North.  Because I'm generous, I won't charge you for that wonderfully informed piece of information, it's a free gift - From me to you.

So, if we're going to suffer the worst weather 'since' then, it means that it's not going to be any worse, which means that depending where you are in the country, you will probably experience somewhere between zero and 120 inches of snow.  It will probably be colder and windier on the high ground and in the valleys there will be wetness.

Effectively, the same as there always is during a British Autumn, Winter and Spring.  Should it shut the country down as soon as office workers jump excitedly up and down as the first feathery flakes float past their windows?  No!

Will it? Yes, of course it will - The UK is not prepared for any particular weather pattern that it ever has to face.  Whether it be heat or cold, wet or dry, humid or whatever the opposite of humid is, we're singularly unready for anything except the ability to complain at a moments notice.

What if we had really strange weather? how would we cope with these things if we fall to pieces when we can't see the road-markings because of a light dusting of the white stuff?

-oOo-

There's stories of giant hailstones, as big as golf-balls occasionally falling in the UK, you know, breaking windows, scaring horses, playing the drum parts of White Stripes songs on a bit of rusty air-raid shelter - But did you know, bigger things exist, they're called Ice-Bombs - Some of these things are 9" across and fall out of the sky like bricks.

What would happen if these things came as part of WinterNado? - There would be a huge boom (if you'll pardon the expression) in the Lean-to/Conservatory repair market and people with loft conversions will be jamming the helpdesk line at Velux.

-oOo-

It's not just in the Bible that animals rain from the skies you know.  There have been several documented instances of fish, frogs and worms raining down from the heavens.  The normal explanation for this is that the precipitate (The things what are flung from the sky) are picked up by typhoons and waterspouts, carried miles through the air and deposited on normal God-fearing people who immediately think that the Rapture is starting.  There have also been reports of birds falling from the skies, zoologists investigated these reports and found that it was due to a strange avian behaviour called 'landing'

What would happen if these things came as part of WinterNado? - Knowing the luck of the average Brit, the animals that fell from above would be Snapping Turtles and Blue Whales, which, if you were to look on the bright side, would both solve our food crisis and teach children in the immediate vicinity of a 'turtle-strike' not to poke their fingers into things that they don't recognise - Which is good advice to all of us I think you'll agree.

-oOo-

Coloured rain is another popular 'Extreme' weather condition.  Well, I say extreme... I mean it's just rain, that's not clear.  You can have coloured rain in a plethora of designer colours and it's often due to contaminants or Algae in the body of water where the rain originally came from.

What would happen if these things came as part of WinterNado? - The Thrash Metal band 'Slayer' would sue anyone who used the phrase 'Raining Blood' on their Facebook feed - Presuming that the rain was red that is, if it were green then I suppose you'd be fine saying things like 'OMFG! It's, like, totally raining snot.' Which Slayer probably wouldn't care about that much, until their next album came out.

-oOo-

But all joking aside, if it does snow, take it easy out there, allow extra time for your journey, only travel when you have to and all that jazz.  But if you can get away with it, ring into work and say you can't get the car off the drive, or the train's not running, or the motorway is knee deep in freshly fallen marmosets.  Go sledging, have a snowball fight, fill a dumb person's hood with snow and then tell them that it's raining.

But don't, whatever you do, stick your middle finger in something that looks like a giant Pukka Pie with an evil face - You'll never be able to say goodbye to your boss ever again...

Well, in fairness - I wasn't hungry

OK. It's Friday and we're all (well, those of us in the UK at least) bracing ourselves for the chaos that a flash blizzard containing a whole 3" of snow will bring to us this afternoon.

Roads will close, electricity lines will be brought down, ice-cream sales will drop by 5%, lions will lie down with lambs, and most importantly, brie and pate will be slightly more difficult to cut.

But I don't 'do' weather reports on this Blog, I try not to cover the standard, the usual and the mainstream - That's what Facebook's for. So I intend to perform a handbrake volte-face, whilst everyone is shivering in their caves, hiding from the winter's frozen bite, I will complete the story that I started yesterday, and tell you snippets of the sweatiest night of my life.

-oOo-

As was covered fully in yesterday's post, the Memsahib and myself had found ourselves inveigled into a group of towering transvestites, en-route to one of Europe's premiere parties for the momumentally uninhibited. I had just become Western Europe's newest Gay Icon and the night was still young.

We wandered from the pub, which was virtually next-door to the venue, The Hammersmith Palais (Sadly, no longer with us) and joined the queue of deviants. I remarked to Patrick-Mary, or possibly Brian-Fifi that there were a number of people there who weren't exactly 'dressed for the occasion', he smiled and knodded, as if to a child who had just asked why the sky was blue, and replied,

'Ah, a lot of the more hardcore types can't, or won't, really wear their gear out in the real world, there are changing rooms inside,'

I pondered on this for a while, I was still a little bit vanilla at the time, but thought it was odd that these people would be embarrassed about, well, anything really. We reached the front of the queue in short order and after being given a quick look up and down by the security staff and a read of about a thousand signs that explained what would happen to you if you were found taking pictures without a press-pass, we entered the hall proper.

What would be the best way to describe the scene? Have you seen Blade 2? There's a party scene in that film that is about the closest to my first impression of that room. Except that there was slightly less gunfire and the attendees of this party were significantly cooler, to the point of being, well, not exactly indescribable - Because there wouldn't be much point in me trying to describe them I guess, but they were certainly 'unusual'.

I'll describe a few of the more memorable guests:

I'm not sure how many of you are conversant with the work of Thomas Gainsborough, the 18th Century painter? But there was a couple there dressed in costumes inspired by his work. However, instead of being made of richly coloured silks and velvets, they were made of PVC, with a giant, yellow and black, houndstooth check pattern, and they were full coverage... As in they were wearing gloves and Luchador style (gimp) masks (with hats on top). I later found out that these were one-piece costumes with a long, single zip up the back from... Erm... crotch to top of the head - Please don't ask me how I found this out...

There was a young lady with an incredible powder blue crinoline shepherdess costume, also made of PVC, complete with white PVC underskirts - Odd you'd think, but not out of the ordinary, you might even just get away with it at a normal fancy dress party. She did have a lamb with her too... Well, I say a lamb, it was actually a hairy gentleman, on his hands and knees, being led around on a collar and lead... He wasn't the only one of these, but he was one of the few wearing pants.

An unusual gentleman, who seemed to have a very particular, I hesitate to use the word fetish, but I probably should. He was wearing a suit made of what I would describe as 'dummy' rubber - That thick, yellow tinged clear rubber that baby's dummy are made of... It had no seperate arms, these were constricted by his sides, and his legs were similarly constrained (I think, although I may be wrong - I remember wondering whether he'd been placed there by a friend or he'd shrugged his way there like 'The Very Perverted Catterpillar'). He spent the entire night lying in the doorway of the Ladies Conveniences, occasionally thanking the people who took the time to tread on him, with stilletos. And you'll notice I said people, not ladies, as both the wearers of the footwear, and the gender of toilet user were fairly mix and match.

The last people who particularly stick in my mind were a very accomodating couple... We went to have a sit down, after and hour or so of being bombarded with Dutch Techno music and performers taking angle-grinders to their codpieces and found a seat opposite them. The young lady was sturdily built and topless. I will not even try to estimate her cupsize, but I'm fairly sure it was at the end of the alphabet where the high-scoring scrabble tiles live. She was providing a service for her boyfriend, normally reserved for hungry new-born babies and for some reason frowned upon in train carriages.

Once he'd had his fill, as it were, he stood up, thanked the young lady, shook the hand of the almost skeletal gentleman sat on the other side of her. (Which I thought was the most insanely British thing I had ever seen in my life) and walked off. It turns out that the skinny chap was her boyfriend and the gentleman with the brand new milk moo-stache was simply a fellow partygoer. He looked at me, rasied his eyebrows, and pointed at his partner. I shook my head, waved my hand in a negative fashion and patted my stomach - Immediately thinking that me not wanting to suckle from his girlfriend/wife because I wasn't hungry was probably not the reply that he was expecting.

We made our excuses and left.

The rest of the evening (Well, early hours of the morning to be exact) passed without many other major incidents, we bumped into our friends a few times, we were 'halloooed' and flashed from the balcony by our new-found transvestite horde, we talked to some people who I've since found out were 'famous' in that particular scene and through them, got invited to a couple of after-parties.

We didn't attend them unfortunately, the thought of getting a cab halfway across town, partying until lunchtime and then doing the walk of shame back to the hotel didn't sound that appealing - And I was pretty tired. But given the chance again... I'd be there like a shot, and you should too. And I now fully understand why a significant number of people there were virtually naked...

PVC's bloody hot to wear...